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Opinion

Reflections on the killing of farmers by Boko Haram

President Goodluck Jonathan was still President in November 2014 when a suicide bomber gained access to a Mosque and killed 100 people. Matter of fact he was going for the main Mosque but someone stopped him else the death toll would have been close to a thousand.

As the bomb went off, gun men from Boko Haram opened fire on the remaining worshipers. Ten days before that, 188 people were reportedly killed in separate attacks by Boko Haram. The Jonathan that we say had all the solutions was President then. It is much more easy to gain access to a farm than to gain access to a Mosque next to the Emir of Kano’s Palace, but these animals did.

When you hear people calling the actions of Boko Haram cowardly it is not rhetorics, it is true. They want to take over the country, they claim God is on their side, yet they won’t face the military face to face because they know that Islam is clear that God is NOT on the side of oppressors like them. They rather go inside the bushes, find farmers (rice farmers, for economic effect) and slaughter them. The aim is to bring down the government (not President Buhari’s government, the Nation’s government) and there are multiple ways this can work.

A Nationwide protest that will ground the Nation and lead to anarchy which will make it possible for them to seize regions.

Resignation of the President which will create a Zoning imbalance that may lead to unrest. They won’t even wait for that, before you know it there will be rumours that the killings were done by Southerners to ensure Buhari resigns and Osinbajo takes over.

We have heard worse from both Southerners and Northerners. Don’t forget the same Boko Haram use to bomb Churches so as to ensure the Christians think it is regular Muslims killing them. Luckily for us the President was a Christian at the time so this didn’t work well.

Let’s not even add that if the President resigns, the next President will be forced to resign again by the slaughter of even weaker target. We would have handed them a tool to distabilise the Nation; just go somewhere, kill innocent people.

This would mean that we have to be careful about our reaction. I only cited what happened in Jonathan’s time to show that it is sometimes not ALL about Presidents. These guys are picking soft targets to put pressure on the Nation. They shifted from Churches to Mosque so as to indict Jonathan.

Some fell for it despite Jonathan’s NSA being from the Sultanate! But since it didn’t work full scale now it is all about killing whoever will pain the public the most and whose death will bring the country to it’s knees.

We have to be smart about this one. If the President has failed generally we should also not fail in our reaction to it to such extent that we enable a group of murderers who want to take over the country. If Governor Zulum or Fashola or the likes were President we still won’t have soldiers in every farm to stop cowards from murdering farmers.

This is not to undermine claims of incompetence. The President for example agreed on an Arise Interview that the Service Chiefs may be tired and he will consider replacing them. That was a year ago, they are still there. But again, after that Buratai went into the forest himself with soldiers, fighting. He lost his mother while away. It is not too easy to assume such a person is doing nothing.

Some problems are very complex and difficult to solve. We need to understand this while demanding more from government. It must be done in a way that is not destructive and enabling of the enemy.

Eseoghene Al-Faruq Ohwojeheri is the CEO of Minhaj Publicity, Benin

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